Haslam Seeks To Expand Free College Initiative

Tenn. Governor Emerges as Leader of Free College Movement

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Republican governor from a deep red Southern state has emerged as an unlikely leader of the free tuition movement, winning converts across party lines by emphasizing the need for a better-trained workforce.

Now Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is pushing his state to become the first to make community college free to almost every adult.

Liberals and conservatives remain divided about how much taxpayer money should go toward ensuring more people graduate college. But a critical shortage of skilled, qualified workers is building rare bipartisan consensus that government needs to push harder to educate today’s workforce.

“The free college movement has gained support from the left and the right, albeit for different reasons,” said Thomas Harnisch, director of state relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Liberals see free college as a social
justice matter that benefits low-income students, he said, while
conservatives see it as a way to bolster the workforce without
significant spending.

Tennessee
made history three years ago when Haslam pushed the passage of an
education bill offering free community college to new high school
graduates, a first in the country. That same legislation made state
technical schools free to all residents, no matter how long ago they
graduated.

Former
President Barack Obama’s attempt to pass a similar federal program was a
non-starter with Republicans in Congress, but several states followed
with their own variations and more are considering them.

Haslam
now wants an expansion — one that would make Tennessee the first state
to offer free community college to nearly all adults without a
post-secondary degree or certificate. The proposal still has to pass the
state’s Republican-dominated legislature, but the House and Senate
speakers have said the measure is expected to sail through.

Deangelo
Sweat, a 20-year-old student at Nashville State Community College who
was too old to apply for free tuition when he went back to school this
semester, said expanding the program to older adults will help people
like him.

“It will really change lives,” said Sweat, who is studying electrical engineering. “It can open up real careers for people.”

Haslam,
whose family owns Pilot Flying J, said he understands what a college
degree can mean to someone. When he announced the expansion, he spoke of
his father, who started with one gas station and built the nation’s
largest truck stop chain.

“My
dad was the first in his family to attend college and get his degree,
and the trajectory of his life — and mine — was changed forever,” Haslam
said.

The
expanded program would cost about $10.7 million, to be covered by
lottery money, Tennessee Higher Education Commission Executive Director
Mike Krause said.

U.S.
Rep. Steve Cohen, who fought for years to pass the lottery when he was a
state legislator, has criticized using reserves to fund the free
community college program. The lottery was created to fund academic
scholarships at all the state’s colleges, and Cohen has said the
community college program harms lottery scholarships at four-year
universities because they aren’t able to grow with rising tuition.

Tennessee
and other states pay tuition not covered by federal and state financial
aid grants but don’t cover books, housing and other expenses _ which
can exceed the cost of tuition.

The
AASCU has opposed these types of scholarship programs because poor
students who would already get free tuition through grant money don’t
get additional benefits.

Since the Tennessee Promise legislation was enacted, Oregon and Minnesota have enacted free

community
college programs to recent grads, said Suzanne Hultin, an education
policy specialist with the National Conference of States Legislatures.
And Kentucky is set to launch its own version later this year.

Earlier
this year, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed a plan to make the
state’s community colleges and tuition at four-year public universities
free to students whose families make less than $125,000. The program
would also cover older adults.

“Haslam,
I think, has made a mark,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the
Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “He’s
arguably the education governor.”

The changing American workplace is nudging states toward these measures, Carnevale said.

“Education
policy is our employment policy because we now live in a world where 60
percent of the jobs require some kind of education or training after
high school,” Carnevale said.

Krause
said the free programs are making progress. State figures show 33,000
new high school graduates have taken advantage of the free community
college program and first-time freshman enrollment has increased 30
percent since the program began.

“But
there is still a lot to do in terms of making sure that when a company
is hiring it is not interviewing 400 people for two vacancies,” Krause
said. “We’re making sure we’ve got the right talent to attract the right
employers.”

Policy analyst Mary Clare Reim at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for
Education Policy said the conservative think tank agrees that more
workers should be trained to fit employers’ needs but thinks giving
businesses more say in the curriculum at schools makes more sense.

“Unfortunately,
what we’ve seen is that a lot of these programs that remove the
financial incentives too much tend to put a downward pressure on quality
and tend to shift a lot of financial burdens on taxpayers,” Reim said.